


stay there (‘cause i’ll be coming over)

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: But probably gonna tag with daddy kink at some point so if that’s not your thing pls don’t read, Complicated Relationships, Drug Use, F/M, I just like putting the warnings ahead of the horny stuff I’m SORRY, Marriage, Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut, Sugar Daddy, Temporary Character Death, but tagging just to be sure, but this is just a sugarhusband au and pls don’t @ me, fic title from sweet disposition by the temper trap, i KNOW i’m a wreck pls don’t tell me, i mean if u ignore the murder or whatever, idk how to put this without just saying the exact premise of this, it’ll be lighthearted for the most part, it’s not explained in detail, there will be a lot of it but i’ll tag specifics once i update, this will probably be made an e fic but i’m not sure yet, what a flex to tag that right after the other tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: He’d waited for years to come back to her, to truly come back to her, but it had been his own choice. He had seen her, living a happy life without him, and he made the choice to go back to her before that life existed. He opens the door of the mansion on the day before she’d left home for good, and he goes to her.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JjdoggieS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JjdoggieS/gifts).



> This is for Julia- my third WIP for our exchange!!!! I love you so much for your constant encouragement, and I am so excited for us to be working together on a series too!!!! You’re such a great friend, and I hope you enjoy this!!!
> 
> Also, a huge thanks to ellaphunt19 for looking this over for me!!!! 
> 
> As far as my current WIPs go- expect Human, Raising Hell, Danse Macabre, Time After Time, and Journal of Ardency updates to be what I update next!!! 💕💕💕 I want to have a few fics completed before fic-mas starts, and, as it’s late November, I’ll be on that soon!!!! 💕💕💕

He is thirteen years old when he runs away. 

The first jump takes him ten years into the future, based on the newspaper in a stand beside him. 

Shocked and elated that he’d been right, that he  _ could  _ do this, he doesn’t jump forward again. 

Instead, he searches for his family. He stops by the mansion, only to take a headcount of anybody left. It is just Luther, who is asleep in his bedroom. Five scans the rest of the mansion for clues as to where they all went, but he finds none. 

Not too worried about it, he heads to the kitchen to make a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. 

There’s no reason to stay under Reginald’s roof if the others haven’t, is there? 

He steals from Reginald’s safe, blinks to a hotel, and finds an empty room to hide out in, setting a stack of cash beside him, not wanting to not pay when he’s using the room. It’s late at night, so he can justify sleeping off the exhaustion on a nice, plush bed that is much more comfortable than the one at the mansion. He wonders if Reginald found the cheapest mattresses possible for a few moments before he drifts off easily.

* * *

When he wakes up, he starts searching for his siblings. He goes to the library, researching all of them. 

Allison is who he finds first, and, considering she’s quickly becoming one of America’s sweethearts, he supposes it makes sense.

Five isn’t able to find her address, but he’s able to figure out that she’s in California. He contemplates teleporting there or trying to figure out how to drive. Taking a plane would probably be impossible with all the security measures…. 

He actually writes down his equations when he decides to blink there, having to go based on longitude and latitude which is something he does very rarely. It’s something he avoids, worrying about accidentally trapping himself or impaling himself on a sharp object, but he doesn’t want to go face Reginald. Plus, he imagines Allison will be somewhat receptive to him, all things considered. It’s not like they ever hated one another or anything. Of all the people in his family with powers, she’s one of the more intelligent of the bunch. 

When he lands in LA, he purses his lips, trying to figure out the best way to find Allison. Supposedly, she’s filming for some rom-com,  _ Love On Loan.  _ He figures if he finds out where her house is, he’ll just teleport in. 

As he has the thought, he notices a woman has passed out in shock beside him, realizing that some thirteen year old had just appeared out of thin air beside her. Stepping gingerly over her body, he rolls his eyes. The first time he’d realized that not all ordinary people were like Vanya, he’d lost all desire to ever spend time with them. Seeing this woman makes him feel a pain in chest, knowing Vanya had likely been searching for him for years. He’d make a point to see her next, then. Allison would likely know where she was, and he could go make sure Vanya was taken care of. It must have been awful for her, waiting for him so long, but he’d make sure it would be alright.

Finding Allison’s home was actually relatively easy, once he thought to use his tracking skills. Or, well, actually once he found a creepy man who recognized that he was an Academy member and knew where she lived. After breaking the man’s nose and jaw, not wanting to hear that shit about his sister, he blinks inside of Allison’s house. 

She’s highly inebriated. 

“Oh, fuck, I shouldn’t have tried that shit,” she mutters. “Great job, Allison, now you’re hallucinating your thirteen year old estranged brother.” 

“You’re not hallucinating me, moron.”

“God, and he’s still not even  _ likable.”  _

“Again, not a hallucination. I’m your actual thirteen year old brother, Allison. I’ll prove it.”

“If you’re really Five, tell me an obscure calculus rule.”

“You wouldn’t even know if it was accurate if I did,” he sneers. 

“Oh my god, it’s really  _ you.”  _

“Yes, Allison, it’s really me. I need you to tell me where everyone is.” 

“Why the fuck would I know that?”

“Because we’re  _ family.”  _ Even if Five wasn’t the friendliest to them, he still respected that fact. 

“You’re really thirteen, huh?”

“Yes. We’ve established this.”

“I have a piece of advice for you, Five. We’re not family, we don’t care about one another, and we’re all gonna die.”

“Alright, so you’re useless apparently. I’ve gotta find Ben, then.” 

She laughs, lying back on her couch and feeling at the fabric. Five wonders what substances she’s on. He starts marching away, stopping when Allison tells him, “You might want to talk to Klaus. If you’re looking for Ben.” 

His heart stops beating for just a second. “Is he…” The next word sounds choked, “Dead?”

“No, he’s just under the same impression that you are. That we’re still a family.”

“Is there something wrong with Klaus?”

“There’s something wrong with all of us.”

“Goddammit, Allison,” Five snaps. “I came to you because you were supposed to be  _ competent.  _ Clearly, something is wrong if we all chose to separate.”

“No, something is  _ right.  _ Reginald isn’t our father, and he’s the reason all of us are as we are now. When did you even get to this time?”

Five sets his hand in his pockets, clenching his jaw, “Yesterday.”

“So, yesterday for you, you ran away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a lot’s changed since then, Five. The best advice I can give you is to just go back.”

Five shakes his head, “What is  _ wrong  _ with you? You’ve never acted like this before.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not thirteen.”

“You’re certainly still acting like a child,” Five says, walking forward and crouching beside her, wondering if she was about to pass out. Her nose is bleeding a little, but he assumes she’s probably mixed more than just the one substance. “And why did you leave Luther?”

She punches him. 

He clutches his already swelling eye, asking, “What the  _ fuck  _ was that for?”

“Go away, Five.”

“So you can go do more drugs?”

“Oh, cool it, Nancy Reagan.” 

Five glares at her, “I’m finding the rest of them, but I’m not done here.” 

“I heard a rumor that you left and never went to California again,” she breathes, and Five nearly yelps from the sensation of his body teleporting against his will. It’s never happened before, and, when he lands precisely in Nevada, he yells a bunch of ‘fuck you’s in the direction of California, upsetting a bunch of birds in the process.

* * *

Five decides against finding Vanya next, needing someone who he knows for sure cares to keep their family together. She’d already waited a decade, he reasons, so it’s alright to wait a little longer. 

Ben is thankfully not located in California, which Five has already decided to hate for the rest of his life and would never go back to on his  _ own _ accord. 

He’s in New York, a grad student and TA at Columbia. Five watches a lecture he teaches, waving at him from the back and making his eyes go wide for just a second before he goes back to a discussion of a book they’d all read when they were about ten. The students all sigh in collective relief when the lecture ends thirty minutes early, not even seeming to care about a thirteen year old sitting among them, likely too exhausted _to_ care.

When all of them have filed out, Ben asks, “When did you get back?”

“About a day and a half ago. Where’s the rest of the family?”

“Klaus is in rehab,” Ben offers, glancing down guiltily as he picks at his cuticles. “Don’t really know about the rest, though.”

Five’s stomach sinks, “What about Vanya?”

“What about her?”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, Five. She just recently moved out of the mansion. Maybe a year or two ago. I think she was afraid to leave it.”

_‘Because of_ _me,’_ Five thinks. _‘She was waiting for_ me _to come home.’_

He doesn’t say it out loud, but his chest is swelling in fondness for his favorite, wanting to get to her so he could share his excitement with her about time travel. She’ll be so proud of him. 

Instead, he tells Ben, “That’s understandable. Well, we need to all get back together, nonetheless.”

“Five, I love all of you, don’t get me wrong.” Five stiffens at Ben’s words, not used to hearing people say he loves him. “But that’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?” Five asks, and he’s aware it must be clear how young he sounds with the words. He can’t help it, though. He’s genuinely flummoxed why they all left one another in the first place. Even if Reginald wasn’t their father, which he agreed with, they were all  _ still  _ family. They chose each other. 

Or they were supposed to, anyway.

“Five, it’s just…” Ben sighs, trying to find the right wording. “It’s  _ hard  _ to be around one another now, you know? We don’t want to remember those days.”

“Why not?”

Ben grimaces. “Listen, Five. Anything you need, just tell me, and I’ll help you. But… I’m very busy right now, and I can’t deal with all of this, okay?”

“Deal with all of what?” His voice sounds weak to his own ears. Ben was his friend, he shouldn’t be pushing him away. Maybe it was that he was upset that Five had gotten closer to Vanya recently, that he’d spent more time alone with her. He didn’t even think that might’ve hurt his feelings. 

But, no, that was ten years ago. 

“Five, I’ve got a lot going on, okay? If you need a place to stay or food or something, I’ll help you, but I  _ can’t _ be your father.”

Five finds himself screaming at Ben, throwing a tantrum that likely resulted from the influx of hormones, which he despises deeply in this moment, “I don’t  _ want _ you to be my father, Ben. I want our family to actually give a fuck about one another.” He hates how his voice cracks, but he’s trying to handle all of the bewilderment and anxiety he’s feeling. Ben’s not acting like himself, either. What is  _ wrong  _ with them? 

“Five-“ Ben starts, but he storms off, teleporting back to the mansion. He grabs a knapsack and piles in about 100k from Reginald’s safe into it. Five will have to stay there a while, apparently.

* * *

He finds Diego entirely by accident. Apparently, seeing someone with a suspicious look and a knapsack is enough for Diego to stop him, probably about to perform a citizen’s arrest before he realizes who is standing in front of him. 

“Five?”

“Yes,” he replies sullenly, already knowing that Diego is about to disappoint him too. The ones with powers he actually had hope for had already made him lose all faith, so he didn’t think Diego was going to be any better. 

“When did you get back?

“Two days ago,” he growls, not wanting to have to repeat all of this shit again. They should have all been together, to hear this in the first place. God, he needs Vanya right now. She wouldn’t disappoint him; she was incapable of that. It was why she was his favorite, and he needed his best friend, needed to confide in  _ somebody  _ when he’s seeing all this bullshit. 

“So, you just experienced running away… yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, buddy.” Diego hugs him, like this is something that they did. Five tries to bite him, but he doesn’t relent, patting his head. “That’s rough, buddy.”

“What are you doing?” He tries to back away but Diego is faster, keeping his arms tightly around him. “What kind of pre-midlife crisis am I witnessing right now?”

“Can I not hug my little brother after not seeing him for ten years?”

“Ideally, you wouldn’t.” 

Diego makes a small noise, moving away from him. Five wonders if he’s under the influence of something, but he’s clearly not. “Why did you stop me?” Five asks, wondering if Diego was going to actually be one of the family members to surprise him by having a sliver of sense. 

“I was going to take you to the police station,” Diego says. “To get back in the police academy.”

“Jesus  _ Christ,” _ Five groans, losing hope already. 

“What?”

“You’re exactly what Reginald wanted you to be, just in a different font, and you’re clearly deluded about it,” Five explains for him. “Luther staying at the mansion and doing his bidding make sense, but, Diego, I thought you were  _ better  _ than that.” Well, he really didn’t. Even though he wanted his family together, them not being at the mansion made sense. He understood them not wanting to follow Reginald’s orders anymore. Hell, he’d jumped forward to directly defy them. He just didn’t understand why they hadn’t even kept  _ track  _ of one another. 

Diego is upset by his words, and, before Five can get another black eye, he blinks away. 

He has to find Vanya and sort this entire mess out.

* * *

Finding Vanya proves to be more difficult than he expected, which surprises him. He didn’t know why, but he always just assumed he’d be able to find Vanya anywhere. It was a pretty stupid thought, he knew, but she was consistent and  _ reliable.  _ Five always just felt like Vanya would always be there the second he needed her, having grown used to her always there when he struggled in the first place. 

It takes much more tracking. Especially when it occurs to him that nobody even knows of her existence in the first place. Five looks through as many articles as he can find in the library about anything regarding the Umbrella Academy, and then the Hargreeves in general, and then just Vanya Hargreeves. She’s nowhere, in any of them. 

Maybe she’s still in the city, though. He starts searching around blindly, panicking at the thought that she could have just  _ died  _ and none of them would have even noticed. Vanya wasn’t like them, she couldn’t last on her own. People would take advantage of her kindness and hurt her, and he was so  _ stupid  _ to waste his time going to the others first. 

It’s as he’s panicking that he sees the Icarus Theatre. Vanya used to always tell him that she dreamed of playing for an orchestra, and she’d always wanted to play for Icarus because she wanted to start her career in her hometown. Five always promised her that she’d be one of the greatest violinists of all time, that she wasn’t like most people without powers, that the world would see something extraordinary from her with her music and they’d undoubtedly all want it. 

When he walks inside, he realizes that he’s crying. He thinks it’s all of the frustration finally expressing itself, and he doesn’t try to fight it off. 

By some stroke of luck, an abandoned flyer is resting near concessions, and he finds her name in the violin section, nearly gasping in relief as he does. She’s  _ here;  _ he can find her. 

And when he does find her, he wishes he hadn’t at all. 

Not like that.

* * *

It’s not that anything is wrong with her. 

Really, he should be  _ happy  _ for her. 

But he can’t breathe when he sees her kissing some guy that he’s never met, not sure why he’s even struggling with seeing it at all. If it was Allison, he wouldn’t have cared. 

But this man could clearly hurt her, and Five had to step in. When he yanks the man off of her, she screams, staring at him in bewilderment. 

“Hi, Vanya,” he breathes, scowling at the man when he starts yelling at him and blinking them both away. 

“What are you  _ doing  _ here?” Vanya hisses, jerking away from his touch and making Five frown. 

“I landed here from the past,” he says weakly, holding his hands together, so he’s not tempted to reach for her again. “Got here a few days ago.”

When she doesn’t speak for a few minutes, he adds, feeling awkward at the way she’s fuming, “From when I jumped when we were thirteen.”

“I  _ know  _ that,” Vanya snaps, seething. “I’m not an  _ idiot.”  _

“I just thought-“ His voice sounds small to his own ears, and he’s backing away slowly from her, heart plummeting. What  _ happened  _ to them? 

Why would she act like _this?_

She cuts him off, saying, “I don’t care what you thought, Five. You had  _ no  _ right to come here and just completely  _ ruin _ everything.” 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, stumbling away. 

“What did you  _ think  _ was gonna happen? You’re  _ thirteen.”  _

“I just was trying to protect you.” He feels like he’s about to pass out. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t need you to protect me,” Vanya tells him, starting to walk away. Five doesn’t try to reach for her, body so tense he doesn’t feel like he can move at all. His face feels numb. He wonders if he’s having a panic attack, something he’d witnessed before from civilians when he’d saved them. Either that, or he’s having a heart attack at thirteen. Which would suck. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and she whirls around. 

For a second, he thinks she’s going to forgive him for leaving her, instead she screams, “I wish you had just left for good!”

When he falls to his knees, holding onto himself as she leaves him behind, feeling like everything he’d understood was gone, like the world had ended like Reginald had always said it would, he doesn’t stand back up.

* * *

He stays in that timeline for twelve years, taking note of the stocks and lottery numbers from previous years before then, making his plans while he worked on his time traveling abilities. 

Reginald had been what ruined all of his family, and he would ruin him in turn.

* * *

He’s 25 when he goes back in time to 2005, not bothering to go back to the house until he’s fully prepared. Five keeps tabs on his siblings still, ensuring they’re all okay. They’re 16, and, to them, he’s left three years before. 

Multiple times, he takes Klaus to the mansion while he’s still high off his mind, keeping him off the streets. He isn’t absent from them, exactly, but he doesn’t interact with them at all. Not enough that they’re able to notice he’s there beside them.

* * *

Five is thirty years old when he kills Reginald. 

He jumps around in time enough that the others barely grow much at all. They’re only about 19 years old when Luther finds him dead.

* * *

He’d waited for years to come back to her, to truly come back to her, but it had been his own choice. He had seen her, living a happy life without him, and he made the choice to go back to her before that life existed. He opens the door of the mansion on the day before she’d left home for good, and he goes to her. 

She’s 19 years old, and she is reeling at the death of Reginald. Five knew that she had planned to leave, at least according to the timeline that would now never exist. Vanya had been afraid to leave immediately once she’d become an adult as the few (excluding Luther) who hadn’t left already had. It had only been when she’d had the confidence to leave that she had, though he knew she hadn’t wanted to spend any excess amount of time with Reginald. 

It hurts to look at her when he goes to the funeral, staring at all of them expectantly. Luther looks the most shaken up; the others seem to be here out of some sort of obligation. Vanya keeps looking at him, eyes wide with shock, and he wonders if she’s going to scream at him again. 

He’d be able to manage, if she wanted to. It was fine; he already had a plan. 

“How are you older than all of us?” Diego interrupts his speech about the future. Five had been trying to spin a tale about all of them dying, hoping they wouldn’t all separate, and he scowls at Diego when he interrupts him. 

“What part of the future do you not understand?” Five asks, sneering at him. Even if none of them are actually in danger, Five fully intends for them to not become the ghosts of people that they’d been when he jumped forward. Ben had been the only one who’d acted with any sense at all, and he never really learned what broke them the first time. 

In the twelve years he’d stayed in that timeline, he’d dealt with a lot of shit. 

Though he could never interact with Allison (fucking California, he still couldn’t go back there), he had hired someone to watch over her for him. At one point, she’d OD’ed on a bottle of pills not prescribed to her, and Five had had to get her transferred to a hospital near where he stayed, not complaining when he had to go to family therapy and she’d stayed dead silent beside him. Diego had to be bailed out of jail multiple times, and Klaus had to be bailed out of jail _and_ checked into rehab even more times. Vanya had developed some sort of rebellious streak, like she was deliberately trying to piss him off by regularly sleeping with random people she’d just met, walking by herself late at night, drinking heavily with her meds. (And, to be fair, it worked.) 

None of that had been why he’d finally chosen to go back in time, though. When Reginald had only had Luther among his ranks, he kept sending him onto his missions, and, eventually, Luther was incapable of handling it. 

After he had essentially sent Luther to his own death, killing Reginald was the most satisfying thing Five had ever done. Though his brother is upset now, he hopes that he wouldn’t be if he had known the truth. Either way, having Reginald dead and Luther upset about it was better than not having Luther at all. 

Even if it isn’t entirely moral to lie to them so much, he cannot force himself to feel guilty for it. He is keeping all of them from an awful life, trying to take care of them when they’d proven time and time again that they’d been unable to take care of themselves. If jumping forward in time had taught him anything, it was that they all had to be together before something truly awful  _ did  _ happen. 

And, really, Luther dying wasn’t  _ technically  _ the end of the world he claimed was about to happen, but it was still truly  _ horrible.  _ Reginald was deplorable, and Five is almost thankful that killing him had brought his family together. Being murdered and bringing them all together again was the only good thing Reginald had ever done, in Five’s eyes. 

Five probably wouldn’t be able to keep them together if he was such an ass though, so he tries to make his voice sound less venomous as he adds, “The important thing is that we stick together.”

Allison pipes up, “I have to leave, actually.”

Oh, goddammit. “You can’t do that,” Five says, teeth gritted together in an attempt to keep from yelling at her. 

“If the world is ending, we should just let it.”

Five pinches the bridge of his nose.  _ “What?” _

“Who says we can stop it from happening anyways?” Allison asks rhetorically, already starting to walk away. “I’m leaving.” 

“Jesus Christ, Allison,” Five groans. “No.”

“I heard a rumor that you didn’t follow me.”

Five is already visualizing her going to California, and he tries not to sound frantic as he calls out, “At least  _ try _ to take care of yourself.”

Turning to the rest of them, he adds, “Okay. Which of you  _ don’t  _ intend to disappoint me today?”

“I don’t think any of this is true,” Klaus offers. Five despises that he’s entirely correct. 

“I’ll pay you if you stay,” Five says, knowing this trick from all the times he’d done it before. 

“I’m willing to stick around and see if it is,” Klaus continues solemnly. Five resists the urge to roll his eyes. 

“I’m willing to help,” Luther announces. If Luther had a tail, it would be wagging at the possibility of a new person to please. Five is very thankful for Luther’s daddy issues, all things considered. They’d keep him alive. 

Five smiles at him, resisting the urge to pat his head and call him a good boy. 

“I’m not getting involved with this,” Diego says, like he didn’t spend years after the Academy, trying to live the life of a hero. 

Still, he’s the least irresponsible of them (excluding Ben, who Five is 90% certain will stay anyways), so Five tells him, “Take care of yourself too, then, Diego. And call me with updates.”

Ben agrees, lips pressed into a thin line, like he’s caught onto Five’s bullshit, but he’ll likely talk to him after everyone else leaves. He’s smart enough to know that Five is lying for good reason.

“Alright,” Five says, glancing over to Vanya before he asks. “So, besides Allison and Diego.” He stops speaking, wanting to ramble on about their idiocy but deciding against it because they weren’t going to change their mind. At the very least, they’d actually take care of themselves until Five figured out how to get them all to stay together. “You are all willing to help, yes?”

“I didn’t say I was,” Vanya points out, and he resists the urge to flinch at her voice. He has no idea when she’d gotten as vicious as she had the night he’d gone to her at thirteen years old, but he doesn’t think it’s right to be upset with her when she technically hasn’t ever done that. Not to her knowledge at least. 

And that will never happen, not if he has anything to do with it.

Five speaks softly, trying not to sound affected by the concept of Vanya leaving him behind again. He doesn’t think she’ll leave him for good, but he thinks of it regularly. She’d implied when he’d gone to her that she’d rather him be dead. It wasn’t that outrageous of a thought that she wouldn’t want to be near him. “You don’t have to stay with us, Vanya, but I’d appreciate it if you did.”

She blinks, likely shocked that he wasn’t acting like an arrogant ass about that one thing. Didn’t she realize he had a soft spot for her? 

“I can stay,” she finally mumbles, glancing down. 

“Thank you,” Five tells her, truly grateful that she’d agreed to stay. 

“Could I talk to you in a little bit? In private?” Vanya asks, and he nods, turning back to the others. 

“Do you guys need me to explain anything further?” Five offers, thankful he’s managed at least four of them staying together for now. It will be easier to protect them when they’re closer together. Klaus and Luther shake their heads, but Ben cocks his head to the side. Five shoots him a look that he hopes conveys,  _ ‘I’ll explain later, shut up.’  _

They leave them be when he walks upstairs with her, forcing himself not to think of the possibility that she’s about to repeat the words she’d said to him in another timeline. 

“What is it you needed, Vanya?” Five murmurs when he opens the door to his old room and shepherds her inside. 

A shocked noise leaves his throat when her arms wrap around his torso, squeezing onto him tightly. Five hugs her back, shocked at how much smaller she is than him, gently running his hand along her spine, nearly crying at the feeling of her touch. “You’re home,” she whispers. The feeling of suffocation is back, but it’s just that he’s overwhelmed at her being kind to him. He’d not expected this at all, even if he’d tried so often to reassure himself she wouldn’t abandon him again. 

“Yeah,” he confirms. “I’m home.” 

“Five,” she pulls away, and it feels like his skin has been ripped off where her body had been moments before, like she was embedded to him and her moving away took a part of him with her. “I can’t… I can’t be here. In this place.” 

“What do you mean?” His mind was already picturing her gone again, of living without her. 

“I  _ can’t,”  _ she’s crying now. “I was going to leave, Five. I was going to get out of here, finally get out, but then he died. Five, I can’t be here.” 

_ “Oh.” _ It hadn’t occurred to him that she suffered in the mansion. “Would you like to live with me?” Five finds himself offering without much thought to it at all, already trying to figure out where he’d put her if she was uncomfortable sharing a room with him. “I could make some space for you, it’s not a huge deal.”

Vanya makes a small noise. “Wouldn’t that be a burden to whoever you live with?”

Is she asking if he’s single? 

“I live alone,” he says carefully. 

“Nonetheless, you don’t have to offer something just because you feel bad-“

“I want you to live with me,” he interrupts, not wanting her to think he didn’t want her ever. He also didn’t want her in this house if she didn’t want to be here, and he had a perfectly acceptable place that he didn’t mind sharing with her. 

“I’ll pay rent-“ 

She stops when he cuts her off again, “Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t live with you completely rent free,” Vanya protests. 

“I wouldn’t mind if you did.” 

“Isn’t there anything I could do?” 

“You could marry me,” Five blurts, which he does not intend to do. “For tax purposes,” he amends smoothly. 

_ “What?” _

“It’s not a big deal if you can’t,” he says hastily. How is it possible that not ten minutes later after he’s truly spoken to her again he has managed to destroy their relationship? 

“Why do you need to marry someone for tax purposes?”

Well, simply put, because he’d lied, but he supposes he cannot exactly say that out loud. “Again, you don’t have to.” 

“I’m not disagreeing,” Vanya adds.

Five isn’t sure how it possibly turned out like  _ this,  _ but he realizes that killing Reginald will only be the second best thing to happen this week. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to thank sweetheartbitterheart for convincing me to make this chapter and holding me accountable hahaha!!!!

When Vanya has gone off to pack her bags, he finds Ben, who glares at him, making Five sigh. “What do you want to know?”

“What really happened?”

“Luther died, and Allison, Klaus, and Vanya nearly did as well, several times.” He allows his voice to hold no inflection, carefully calculating it this way because it will be unproductive to get emotional now. Or, well, he can’t afford to outwardly show how emotional he actually is.

“You’re serious?”

He nods, and he can feel tears prick his vision regardless of the fact that he wanted to appear stoic. “Ben, I can’t let them separate.”

“How did he die?”

“A mission,” he mutters bitterly. He doesn’t want to go into the details, but he will if it gets Ben to not bother him any more than was (probably) warranted. “Reginald forced him to go on it, and he died hours later.”

“What happened to Klaus, Vanya, and Allison?”

“Klaus… well. I’m imagining he’s somewhat the same now.”

Ben is obviously offended on Klaus’s behalf, but he doesn’t try to argue with Five, aware that he’s right. “Vanya and Allison?” 

“Somewhat similar to Klaus,” he says through gritted teeth. They’d been more blatant about why they were being so reckless, but all of the after effects of their decision making had remained the same. 

Thinking of them now, he can feel the irritation and concern starting to come back. At the very least, Klaus and Allison hadn’t acted this way just to _spite_ him. He’s not pissed at the Vanya that exists in this timeline at all, but thinking of the Vanya who’d self-destructed _just_ to make him unhappy only makes him more concerned for her now. 

“And you think this will keep them all alive?” 

He actually does. Even though it’s a completely unorthodox way of protecting them, he _is_ making sure none of them would experience what they’d experienced before again. “Yes, Ben.”

“Alright. Fine. I’ll lie for you, but you need to tell me if you’re starting to worry about them at all.”

Five is _always_ worried about them. He was the only constant in any of their lives, and they hadn’t even _known_ it. “I’m most worried about Allison,” Five confesses. “I can’t keep an eye on her at all, and she has done enough to concern me that I feel that I must.”

“Have you thought about asking Luther?”

“Luther?”

“Yeah. She wouldn’t argue if he was watching over her, I don’t think. And since you’re lying to us anyways.”

Five shrugs; Ben has a point. “You think Luther would?”

“Absolutely. It’s an excuse to be near and take care of Allison. Plus, he needs a mission.”

His last mission had been the one to kill him.

Five clears his thoughts; he can’t think of that now. It will not do him any good.

* * *

When Five goes to Luther, pulse pounding as he sees him alive and somewhat well, he is surprised to be pulled into another hug. Five doesn’t try to shrug him off, mainly because Luther invading his boundaries and _alive_ beat out Luther not invading his boundaries and being _dead_ any day. So, he takes the hug in stride, silently noting that it has already gone on for nineteen seconds longer than the hug with Vanya. 

“I need you to do something for me,” Five says, voice muffled against his chest. 

“Anything.”

“I need you to look after Allison for me.” Five heaves a mental sigh when Luther pulls away. 

However, the big guy’s frown is making Five nervous. “What about the apocalypse?” Luther asks. 

Oh. _That._ Just the apocalypse he lied about.

Employing as condescending of a tone as possible, hoping that Luther’s daddy issues will take the wheel and latch onto his words, Five says, “I need you with Allison, ensuring she’s okay. If you don’t, the world will end.” Considering the majority of what any of the others knew about time travel aside from what Five told them about (and, if he’s being completely honest, most of them likely only listened about 20% of the time) was from shitty movies, Five is pretty certain this will work.

It does. Excellent. 

“Well, if you think that being with Allison will save the world.”

Okay, so maybe it isn’t that Luther is an idiot and just wants to spend time with Allison. Either way, Five’s mission has been completed, and he mentally pats himself on the back for his superior talent of taking care of his family.

* * *

Though Diego has promised him that he would call if he had any concerns, Five checks on him briefly when Vanya says she wants to say one last goodbye to Pogo. He knows that they aren’t leaving for good, but he also wants her to do whatever makes her comfortable. Plus, it gives him an opportunity to ensure that Diego really is okay.

Five decides that he’s doing about as well as he could hope, trusts that he’ll contact him if there is an issue, and blinks back to the mansion. 

When Vanya spots him, she asks, “Are you ready?”

He nods, smiling gently. 

She asks softly how he got there, and he teleports forward to her in response.

“We could take a cab instead if you’d prefer, though,” he adds sheepishly.

“We can teleport,” Vanya tells him, wrapping her arms around his torso and leaning against him. “If it doesn’t drain you too much.”

“It doesn’t,” he assures. Even if it took away all of his energy for several weeks, he would be fine with it, just for the opportunity to hold her close and not have to explain it.

* * *

While Five starts gathering blankets for her, she asks him, “Five, is it okay if I sleep in the same bed as you? At least for a little bit?”

He grabs her hand, squeezing it gently. “Of course. For as long as you’d like.” He’d been planning to sleep on his couch, but, now knowing that she was comfortable with it, sleeping beside her sounds perfect. When she asks him softly if he meant it, about marrying her, he nods. 

She blushes, not arguing at all. He wonders for a second if she actually wants to be married to him, and his mouth opens a little, wanting to ask but wondering if it would cross a boundary.

“Can we go to bed now?” Five can hear the sleepiness in her voice, and he nods, thankful that they can talk about this more tomorrow. It has been a long day. Well, at least for her it surely has. Nothing had ever compared to the day Vanya had screamed at him to leave, that she’d wished he’d disappeared completely. 

As he walks her to his bedroom, holding the spare blankets still, he shows her around his place, pointing out where everything goes. She nods, but he can tell how tired she is, and he pulls her to his bed. When she settles against it, he smiles at the sight. Even though she isn’t the girl he’d left behind anymore, she’s not the jaded, reckless person he’d had to take to a hospital once after receiving alcohol poisoning. 

“Are you alright?” Vanya reaches for him, and he climbs onto the bed, addicted to the way she kept touching him in the most gentle ways, like she could sense how starved for someone’s touch he was. 

“Yes,” Five tells her. “I’m fine.”

When he turns to his side, not facing her because he doesn’t want her to see the pain in his eyes (something he knows is there from thinking of a life that none of them even know about, that he’s completely alone in remembering), she wraps her arms around his torso, setting her chin on his shoulder. He nearly sobs. While they used to sleep in the same bed a lot as children, if they ever did this, it was him holding her. She tells him softly that whatever he’s thinking about won’t happen, that he won’t let it happen. And she’s right. He will _never_ let it happen. 

When she stays cuddled up to him, he takes her hand in his own, the guilt muted by joy just for long enough that he can press his lips to her knuckles.

* * *

Their wedding is a small enough affair that he justifies not inviting the others. Which, to be fair, she thinks it’s for tax purposes, so she doesn’t exactly question them not being there (along with the fact that she probably wouldn’t have invited them to her wedding in the first place, based on everything he knew about all of them). She doesn’t comment on any of it at all, just telling him after that she is glad that he is home. 

The guilt gnaws at him again, and he pretends not to feel it.

* * *

When Vanya walks into his apartment a week later after their weddding, she finally asks him where he was all those years.

He glances over to her, not knowing how to answer. When he looks away, guilty for lying to her, even if they’d only technically been reunited for a short time, Vanya asks him if he’s upset with her.

“What?” Five isn’t sure why she is worried about that, wondering if he’s done anything to indicate he is unhappy with her at all. “Why do you ask?”

“You just have seemed… different.” 

What does she mean by that? He doesn’t think he’d acted much differently to any of them, but he hasn’t actually interacted with any of them in years. Taking care of all of them in another timeline, that he was determined they’d never experience again, had given him a somewhat misconstrued idea of what they were like in _this_ timeline. Vanya in that timeline hadn’t wanted him at all, wouldn’t have _cared_ if he was upset with her. 

“Am I bothering you?” Five asks her, studying her expressions, trying to see if there was any indication at all that he’d made her uncomfortable. 

“No, you’re not. I just… I worried that I did something wrong.” 

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he assures. “I’m just a little… stressed, V.” 

“That’s okay.” She offers him her hand, and he takes it. “Five, about our marriage… And with us now being married-”

Cautiously, he interrupts, “What is it you want to know?” Really, he should just admit to her why he’d even asked her to marry him, but… it is not something she wants to know.

“How were we even _able_ to get married?”

Oh. This is actually a simple answer. “We’d never been adopted. In no way whatsoever are we related.”

She sits down, eyes shining. He realizes this is something that’s a lot to take in for her, and he quietly asks, “You okay?”

“Why would he lie about that?”

Sitting down beside her, grasping both of her hands into his own, he explains, “He wanted us to have a… common story.”

“What do you mean?” She leans forward, pressing close to him, and he tries not to let the proximity distract him. Vanya needs his help, and she’s hearing something truly awful. He can’t focus on his own problems just yet. 

He glances up, making sure they keep eye contact, “Vanya, you know how he got us, right?”

“But he was-”

“He was a monster,” Five cuts her off. “He trafficked children, Vanya. He wasn’t our father.” 

She flinches away, and he feels a weight crush his chest. 

“Why did he want us, though?”

“Because he could use us. For our powers.”

Her voice is small when she speaks next, “So he had no use for me at all.”

Five’s voice is chilly when he replies, horrified at the fact that Reginald, despite now gone from her life, is capable of making her feel insignificant because she _wasn’t_ a good soldier to somebody who’d kidnapped her, “Wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing, V.”

“Sorry.” Every time she says it, he wants to shake her, tell her there’s nothing she’s done wrong at all (and he wouldn’t be lying, this Vanya hadn’t done anything wrong), but he now it is that she is insecure, that she’s been put down so many times that she feels the need to apologize for simply _existing._

“Don’t apologize for that,” Five tells her, tipping her chin up with his index finger. “I just meant to say that… Not being useful to Reginald is _fine._ He was an ass, Vanya, and he didn’t do anything for us at all.” 

She nods, and he presses his forehead to her own. When she leans in and kisses him, he doesn’t move at all, not actually sure what to do. 

Vanya pulls away, “S-”

He kisses her before she can finish her apology.

* * *

Klaus realizes about a month in. It surprises Five, considering the fact that he doesn’t tend to think of Klaus as observant. Though, the more he thinks of it, he realizes that Klaus is probably one of the more perceptive people in all of his family.

“You’re lying,” Klaus tells him bluntly, pouring himself a glass of one of the more expensive scotches Reginald had owned. Five doesn’t really care that he does, though he wishes there was a subtle way to bring up him considering sobriety. Five cannot control what he does, no matter if he wants to or not, but he does wish that he took better care of himself. 

“What do you mean?” Five asks, flicking his gaze from the alcohol to Klaus’s eyes, shoulders tensing as he crosses his arms over his chest. 

“About the apocalypse.” 

Five stiffens, perceptible enough that Klaus can clearly notice. “Listen, Five, I’m sure you have a reason. I just want to hear it.”

He opens his mouth, about to start babbling nonsense, but then Klaus adds, “I know you’re lying to Vanya, too.”

He winces as a sharp pain hits his chest. “What do you want to know, Klaus?”

“Why are you lying to us?”

“For good reason.”

He rolls his eyes, “Elaborate.” 

“I… It’s necessary.” 

“Five, just tell me.”

“Luther died,” Five says, not wanting to get into the parts about Allison, Vanya, and Klaus. It was different to explain to Ben, who’d lived a somewhat okay life in the first timeline. Telling Klaus all that had happened to him felt like too much, at least right now, made waves of apprehension roll through his body. “And I went back in time, to keep that from happening again. The reason I lied to you guys is because I need us to stick together.” 

“Don’t you think we would have if we had the truth though?”

Five finds himself confessing it all again, despite the fact that this is Klaus and that he suffered one of the most in the timeline that wasn’t. It is actually easy to tell him the truth, considering the way Klaus’s eyes go wide make him think he might actually consider a _slight_ change in behavior. Actually, he gets the idea that Klaus wants to amend his vices before they got to the level that they’d been at his worst. He is surprised to hear Klaus telling him that he will try to do better, but, then, when Klaus hugs him, he suddenly _gets_ it. 

Klaus feels sorry for what Five has become. 

It makes him want to scream. How is it possible that he is bad off enough that Klaus would try to get better?

He wonders how much the others _pity_ him. Yes, it may be very well what keeps him alive, but if Vanya had only agreed to marry him-

She’d only agreed to marry him because he offered free rent and board. He needs to remember that; she only wants him for that reason. They have an agreement, not a marriage. 

What is wrong with him? He could have just said that he wanted her to pay a very tiny amount of rent. It wouldn’t have been a huge deal, and he would have been fine. 

“I’m going to get better,” Klaus tells him, interrupting his thoughts. 

But he isn’t worried about Klaus just this moment. 

* * *

In the time before they fall asleep, he is always able to forget his own guilt. When she nestles against his chest, mumbling lightly to him, Five can’t look past how happy he is that she _wants_ him to be near her. 

“Vanya?” Five asks the night after talking to Klaus. She glances up at him, raising her brows for him to continue. “Have you ever done something truly horrible?”

She laughs, “Why do you ask?”

“Just… wanna know what your life was like when I was gone.” It’s not completely true, of course. He wants to relieve his remorse by knowing that she isn’t perfect either, which is unfair and he knows it and he knows he should change it but he doesn’t know how.

“I don’t really know, Five.”

She _is_ younger than him. Oh, God, the fact that she’s 19 is only making this more fucked-

“Have you?”

Swallowing, he nods. 

Her knees are on either side of his waist, hair spilling onto his neck as she asks, “What was it?”

“I’ve done a lot of bad things, Vanya.” An image comes to mind of the night he’d held her hair back when she’d vomited for hours. He isn’t a _bad_ person, for not wanting her to be as bad off as she’d once been. 

She combs his bangs back, “If you ever want to talk about it, you know you have me, right?”

“I don’t want to burden-”

“You’d never be a burden,” she promises, kissing his cheek. “I’d appreciate it if you came to me, Five. When we were little, we always went to each other. It would be nice if we could be that close again, especially when we’re going to be spending time together for a while in the first place.” 

He wants to tell her everything right now, but he doesn’t know what’ll happen if he does. Will she leave him behind? Or begin to act as she had before? 

“Vanya, I’m really sorry I left you.” 

She blinks. “Is that what this is about?”

“Definitely what started it all,” he mumbles. She kisses him softly, and he wraps his arms around her, wishing he’d just never left.

“I’ve already forgiven you for that, Five,” she says softly. 

“What I did was arrogant and selfish. And I almost lost you from it.”

“You mean because of the end of the world?” 

“Something like that, yeah.”

She, Klaus, and Allison would have been dead within years. And if he’d lost four out of six of the only people he ever actually cared about, it _would_ have been the end of hisworld.

* * *

He checks in on Luther’s progress a little bit after he’s reconnected with Allison in California. When Luther answers the phone, he sounds tired, like he’s worn himself out on the day he had been there, making Five roll his eyes. Clearly, it isn’t jet lag. 

“How are you handling California?” Five asks.

“Why did you say California with such a disdainful tone?” 

“Irrelevant,” he says dismissively, not wanting to get into the details of _that_ ever. “Is Allison okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine. Why?”

Maybe things had gone wrong past the age they were now. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment. 

“No reason. She hasn’t been getting any nosebleeds by any chance, has she?” He doesn’t think Luther’s mind will go straight to cocaine, but he does wonder _where_ it’s going based on the terrified noise he makes. 

“Is that what first happens before the apocalypse?” 

_“What?”_

“You said that I had to take care of Allison or the apocalypse would happen.”

Oh, fuck, had he really? 

“I just remember once that she got a nosebleed during a plane ride when we were… like, uh, eleven.”

“Allison doesn’t usually get nosebleeds, Five.” Luther says it like he’s a father lecturing a recalcitrant child, and Five frowns at the telephone in his hand, twirling his fingers through the coils for something to keep him focused. Usually, when he felt unsettled, he’d absentmindedly work on an equation, but his chalk is in the same room as Vanya and he doesn’t want to worry her.

“Oh, right, yeah, that was me. Sorry.” 

“Five?” 

He hangs up, panicking. _Fuck._ Well, at least Allison’s drug habit hadn’t started that. Though, to be fair, she might’ve just started because she was in Hollywood and surrounded by a lot of it. 

“Five?” Vanya walks into the kitchen. He’s still holding onto the telephone, but he releases his grip, turning around to face her. 

“Yes, V?” 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” When she wraps her arms around him, he forces down his concern for the others. They’ll be fine; he’ll assure it.

* * *

Vanya asks him, three months after Reginald’s funeral, if she could play for him, and he frowns at his wife, upset with himself that he hadn’t thought to ask her already if she’d play for him. “Of course,” he tells her, setting down the chalk in his hand, happy that she trusts him enough for this. 

When she takes out her violin, he smiles at her encouragingly. She dashes her tongue out, wetting her lips before asking, “Tell me if it sounds off at all?”

Nothing she could do right now could possibly be wrong, but he knows that she won’t like that as an answer. “I will, V.” 

There’s nothing to say at all though. From the moment her bow brushes across the strings to the moment her nose is scrunching up and asking how she did, he is completely entranced. 

“You sounded wonderful, Vanya. I’m so proud of you.” 

She beams, and his heart clenches. When she ambles over to throw her arms around him, he buries his nose into her hair, inhaling deeply. 

“I missed you.” Her voice is a little muffled as she’s cuddled so closely to his chest, but he can still understand her, lifting his hand up to stroke her hair. “Please don’t go away again, Five.” 

“Don’t intend to,” he promises. She kisses his neck, and he leans back, pulling her fully on top of him. “But you know that I’m not just saying that to make you happy, right? You really did play wonderfully.”

Though he knows she wants to argue, she just says, “Thank you.”

It’s progress. They both know that she wouldn’t have been able to not argue a few months ago. She would say something along the lines that was he is only saying these things to make her feel better, that she doesn’t actually deserve the praise. He is happy that she is able to simply thank him for a compliment now. 

When she tips her chin up to kiss him, he kisses her back languidly, used to the action now.

They haven’t done much outside of kissing, and he knows why. Neither of them have slept with anybody before. A few people had technically offered to sleep with him, but he’d never wanted anybody outside of Vanya. In the timeline that wasn't, Vanya had slept around a _lot,_ but she’s a virgin in this one. He only knows this because she’d admitted it to him one night. She’d been on top of him, rolling her hips while they made out before she told him, and he’d realized immediately that she wasn’t ready, otherwise she wouldn’t have brought it up. 

After that, they’ve done nothing that went out of the realm of kissing, and he’s perfectly content with it. He’d be fine with it for the rest of his life if it meant that she was happy. Five had watched her destroy her life in the last timeline, and he is happy to know that she at least outwardly appears content now. Regularly, he asks her if she is happy with him, wanting to ensure that she actually is, and she always offers him a sweet smile, assuring him that she’s the happiest she’s ever been. 

“Has the apocalypse been averted?” Vanya asks him abruptly. “You haven’t mentioned it, and I haven’t wanted to ask… Is it, though?”

“Yes.” At this point, he could just tell her the truth, but the lies have gone on so long that he doesn’t really know how to do so. As an afterthought, he adds, “But I still think it’s best that we all stick together.”

He doesn’t know where taking care of them ends and his own selfishness begins. There is no line that he is able to discern, and he feels the guilt pressing into his stomach for it. Was it that he’d essentially raised himself from thirteen years old, spent his teenage years and then his twenties averting disaster after disaster? Does he actually know how to act like a normal person? 

Will he ever be able to act in a way where he actually _deserves_ her?

He wants to ask Ben, who understands these things better than him, who might teach him how to actually handle this situation the way a moral person would. 

Allison has not hurt herself in all the time since the funeral and Klaus is mostly sober. And every time he sees Luther, alive, he knows that he is doing _something_ right. 

But this? This right here? He knows it’s wrong, and he knows that he has to tell her eventually.

He just doesn’t know _how._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! I don’t know when this fic will be updated next, but it will be eventually!!!


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